Watching time (Novel): Chapter 8 (Rebekah)

About a year previously…

Rebekah woke silently and let in a slow, ragged breath. She squeezed her eyes shut, as she always did when concentrating.

          Thump.

          The sound was inside the house, and Rebekah instinctively knew an intruder had broken in. She jumped off her bed and grabbed her pocketknife off the dresser, then approached the door.

          Then she froze as two loud bangs came from her parents’ bedroom. Gunshots. Two of them.

          Her blood ran cold and she retreated to her closet and buried herself in a ton of stuff. She knew she should have tried to warn her sister, but she had never actually faced a gunman before. She had no idea how to disarm them, how to escape from them, or even how to survive their attacks. Besides, she thought, Hannah sleeps lighter than I do. She’s probably already hidden.

          But Rebekah knew her sister was gone when she heard another gunshot, this time from a neighboring room. Hannah’s room.

          She covered her mouth with her hand to conceal a scream and even pinched herself as she heard her bedroom door yank open.

          “Window’s open,” a man growled. “She heard us and escaped. I told you we should’ve invested in that silencer.”

          “Our suppliers aren’t willing to give theirs up so easily. It’s more expensive than our profits from this job,” the other grumbled. “Look, we can fake her death. You still have that hostage from the other job?”

          “We kill her, we lose a couple grand from the other job!” the first man protested.

          “We don’t kill her, we lose five grand from this job,” the second retorted. “Now pick and choose, which paycheck do ya want to see in your mailbox tomorrow?”

          There was a silence before the first man responded. “You better make this up to me. We find the other one, wherever she went.”

          “Deal,” the other agreed. “Let’s make this quick.”

          Rebekah couldn’t even think when she heard the gunshot. After a few hours, she managed to formulate a single thought: She’s dead because of me. I traded my life for hers.

         

Rebekah stood in front of the cashier impatiently, although she made no indication she was in a hurry to leave. Canned food items, as well as a few cereal boxes, were scanned one by one. Not fast enough.

          “What happened to you?” the cashier asked. Rebekah didn’t blame him. She looked filthy. She quickly formulated a response that wasn’t a lie, but also failed to reflect the truth.

          “My aunt up in Thomasville died,” she responded. “My parents and sister wanted to go up and be with my grandmother. They said they’d be back soon.”

          The cashier shrugged and continued to scan items. As soon as she could, she left the store and raced down the street to the orphanage she had begun to call home.

Less than an hour later, she was in a car with four complete strangers. The two adults sat in the front seats. The boy who was probably five years younger than her sat behind his father, who was driving, and Rebekah sat behind the mother. She hadn’t bothered to remember their names.

          But she did have a question burning in her mind.

          “Why adopt a teenager?” she asked. “It’s not like it’s going to last long.” Especially if those men ended up finding her.

          “Why adopt at all?” the women asked kindly. Rebekah didn’t know the answer to that question, but she figured that it was a rhetorical question and decided the conversation had ended.

          She glanced to the side and saw the boy staring at her. “What happened to your mommy and daddy?”

          Rebekah felt her face redden from embarrassment. Not even the orphanage actually knew the truth. But she couldn’t lie to this helpless boy, could she?

          Thankfully, the mother stepped in again. “Sometimes, people make bad choices, and it hurts others.”

          Rebekah silently nodded and looked out the window. It was truer than the woman had realized. She was barely able to comprehend the sudden jolt in the car before she blacked out.

 “You are one unlucky gal, aren’t you?” the doctor asked her. She had finally recovered from the car accident, and the emotional trauma following her new family’s death. Now, the doctor summed up all of Rebekah’s pain and suffering in one question.

          “That would be an understatement,” she muttered. “I can go, now?”

          The doctor hesitated and then nodded. “I’m not quite sure if it’s best, though. Sometimes, orphanage girls appear dead on the streets, these days. Sure you’ll survive?”

          Those men are working so hard to catch me. What’s their deal?

          “No, but death can’t hurt me more than life has, so if I do die…” Rebekah shrugged.

          “Tell you what, I’ve got friends up north, I’ll see if any of them are willing to adopt, and in the meantime, you can stay with me.”

          Rebekah opened her mouth to protest. This was a complete stranger! She had no idea if safety was actually on this doctor’s mind! But she glanced to the side, saw a newspaper, and printed on it was the headline: “Killers Strike Again! Three Girls Killed!”

          “Okay,” Rebekah reluctantly agreed. No one knew her past, after all. No one knew who she was. If she was going to be honest with herself, she didn’t even know who she was.

         

Present Day…

Rebekah left with her family feeling happy. She now had a new friend: Myra. And at the same time, the killers had no idea she had moved to the east Texas area. She was safe, and so was her friend.

          No one has to know about the past. It’ll only put more people in danger, spread rumors, cause panic…

          She shivered.

          “Everything okay?” Jerome asked, being the only of the family to notice.

          “Yeah, I’m fine, just cold,” Rebekah told him. Yeah, right, cold in seventy-eight degree temperatures.

          But Jerome simply shrugged. “Okay. I’ll turn the heater on when we get back.”

          Rebekah Hammington. I can live with that.